We were wondering if we were going to have a white Xmas this year — it looks pretty brown out there with a few small spots of crunchy snow here and there. The weather forecast looks like continuing brownness through next week. So we were wondering how often this happens…and the National Weather Service provided the history. We had brown Christmasses here in 2021, 2018, 2015, 2014, etc.!

I’m not worried. I’m sure we’ll get a white January and February.

This is where American universities are at right now. Enrollment is down, tuition is up, and we’re all wondering where we went wrong…and I think WVU is a great bad example. They hired a bad president.

Then, in December, 2020, the university’s president, Elwood Gordon Gee, announced the start of an “academic transformation.” Gee, who is seventy-nine, has a wry smile and a penchant for bow ties. (He reportedly owns more than two thousand of them.) He served as W.V.U.’s president from 1981 to 1985, then had similarly short stints at the University of Colorado, Brown University, and Vanderbilt University, and two at Ohio State University. His two-year tenure at Brown was controversial—he left abruptly, amid criticism that he had ignored the school’s faculty in some of his decision-making—but he has always been a successful fund-raiser. He returned to W.V.U. in 2014. Gee has long argued that land-grant universities, which were created in 1862 by an act of Congress, are meant to “prioritize their activities based on the needs of the communities they were designed to serve,” as he puts it in the book “Land-Grant Universities for the Future.”

“These are perilous times in higher education,” Gee said, that December. “Across the country, there is a loss of public trust, and the perceived value of higher education has diminished.” Enrollment at W.V.U. had dropped more than ten per cent from eight years before. “We must focus on market-driven majors, create areas of excellence, and be highly relevant to our students and their families,” he said.

The revolving-door leadership is a widespread problem. We’ve had a number of chancellors at my university, most of them forgettable, and I didn’t really know any of them — they were outsiders hired to do fundraising, and little more, and never made any impression (our new chancellor was promoted from the faculty ranks, so we can at least hope for a genuine commitment to this university).

I am not impressed by his bow tie collection. An affectation is not a personality.

What really raises my hackles, though, is that phrase, market-driven. Fuck you very much, you don’t understand education at all, go buy yourself another goddamned bow tie.

What’s telling, though, is how he chose to adapt the university to the “market”. He’s cutting programs, of course.

This past August, W.V.U. announced plans to cut thirty-two programs and lay off a hundred and sixty-nine faculty members. Among the undergraduate majors set to be purged or restructured were music performance, environmental and community planning, art history, German, Russian, Chinese, French, and Spanish. Masters programs in acting, landscape architecture, energy environments, linguistics, and creative writing would go, too. The plans made national headlines, with much of the coverage focussing on what the changes suggested about the state of the humanities. But it wasn’t only humanities courses that were being jettisoned. Also on the way out were doctoral programs in management, higher education, occupational- and environmental-health sciences, and math. (The university was quick to note that fewer than five hundred students would lose their intended program of study.)

That’s a list that made me groan at every step. Music? Killing music? Foreign languages on the chopping block? No creative writing? This is insane. I’ve noticed that people who talk about market-driven tend to devalue creativity and diversity, but this is a great disemboweling of the purpose of a university.

And then…MATH? They’re gutting their math program! At a state university!

They’ve back-pedaled a little bit, but not on math.

The administration was receptive to some entreaties—the plan to drop the M.F.A. in creative writing was quickly abandoned, for instance, as was the proposed elimination of majors in Spanish and Chinese. The math faculty prepared an official appeal, arguing that the graduate programs could be preserved but restructured, with an emphasis on math’s connection to other sciences. The university was unmoved. In September, the school’s board of governors voted on the final recommendations: the master’s and Ph.D. programs in math would be discontinued, and sixteen of the department’s forty-eight faculty positions would be eliminated. The undergraduate curriculum would be revised, both to emphasize applied math and also to be more “efficient.”

There’s another danger word: applied. When some people think of math, after a brief, horrified shudder, they usually think that what we ought to be doing is teaching people how to balance their checkbook or how to do their taxes. That isn’t math. That’s accounting and filling out forms.

Relatively few people study pure mathematics — I’m one of those ignorant people who stopped at calculus. But I can appreciate the beauty of the subject at least, it’s just that I got distracted by other disciplines. Also, I’m definitely not one of those applied biologists, and I’ve spent a lifetime getting asked “why would anyone study that?” so I can empathize.

If you insist on being pragmatic and only teaching what you think students need to know to do a job, though, consider how impractical it is to reduce math to a service discipline. Very few people will want to work there. The article’s author interviewed a mathematician working at WVU, Ela Özçağlar.

In October, I went to see Ela at her office there. When I arrived, she was speaking with a third-year Ph.D. student from Turkey. On a board above her desk, she and the student had pinned a list of schools that the student was considering as transfer options. Standing in the doorway, he told me that he was hoping to specialize in geometry and algebra. Students at W.V.U. whose programs are being cut are permitted to finish their degrees, but he didn’t see value in staying. “All the pure mathematicians are planning to leave here in two years,” he said. “The math faculty will just be a teaching college.” A few days before, the university had contacted teachers who were being let go. Ela and Olgur, to their surprise, were not on the list. The unlucky group included four teaching faculty and two tenure-track faculty. Ten other faculty members, most of them senior, had volunteered to leave on their own.

Of course they volunteered to leave! They were being told that they couldn’t do the kind of work that stimulates them and makes it worth living in West Virginia. Somebody doesn’t understand the professor mindset. I found myself getting trapped in a rut of service courses, the undergraduate required courses that I could teach in my sleep, and volunteered/insisted that I get to teach some more advanced courses, despite the fact that they were going to require more work. Sure, I could sleepwalk through the basic stuff for a few more years, but I wanted a challenge that would help me learn more. I completely understand how being denied that opportunity to stretch oneself would lead to faculty leaving.

The author talked to another math faculty member, John Goldwasser, who chewed out the college president. Goldwasser seems to have expected President Bow-Tie to actually care about the university.

A few days before we met, Goldwasser sent a letter to Gee, castigating him for bowing to public opinion, and suggesting that, with a more concerted effort, he and his allies might have persuaded the state legislature to fund the university more generously. “If you had failed,” Goldwasser wrote, “you could have resigned in protest. That might have made it possible for your successor to reap the benefits of your efforts. If not, at least you would be remembered as a hero who battled to save the university.” At the heart of Goldwasser’s criticism, he told me, was the belief that a public university should help to create and shape values, not just reflect the things the majority of people already care about. “Did you know that guns will be legal on W.V.U.’s campus starting next July?” he asked me, referring to Senate Bill 10, which will allow West Virginians to carry concealed firearms on the campuses of state colleges and universities. “So, if I were still here, a student could bring a gun to calculus. The legislature cares about that.”

Goldwasser won’t be here: he’s one of the senior faculty who volunteered to go. The mathematician who asked that I not use their name intimated that perhaps Goldwasser’s decision was made altruistically, to save some of the younger faculty members’ jobs. I asked Goldwasser about this, and he smiled slowly, nodding, leaning into the silence between us. “My decision was selfish,” he said, finally. “I wouldn’t want to work in the kind of department that’s going to be left.”

That’s understandable. Not at all understandable to a certain kind of college administrator, apparently.

A commission has been busy redesigning our ugly state flag, and they’ve settled on a design that they will submit to state congress. They may diddle with it a bit, but generally, this is what it will look like:

Initially, I had favored a flag that featured an Ominous Loon, but I guess this one will do. It’s clean and simple, the colors reflect our name (Minnesota is from a Native phrase that means “where the water meets the sky,”) and I think it’s just plain pretty.

It doesn’t have a loon, unfortunately, but then our newly redesigned state seal has one.

I look forward to all the Minnesota school children being able to draw their flag this spring. Alas, my poor granddaughter lives in Wisconsin, and will be tortured with the effort to draw the cluttered abomination of the Wisconsin state flag.

I’m ready to fly away from the damp foggy Pacific Northwest to return to the cold snowy upper Midwest. It’ll be good to get home, but at least I can say that I got to watch my mother get visibly stronger in the week I’ve been here. She is off the oxygen during the day, and is able to get up and walk to the kitchen to get a cup of tea all by herself. If she keeps up with her therapy, I expect her to be roller-skating and dancing and changing flat tires next time I’m back this way.

The only downside is that she’ll be complaining even more vigorously about her offspring taking her cigarettes away. It’s for her own good!

When I was a young boy, my grandfather had a special knife hung above the fireplace, one that he said he inherited from his father, and that he would pass down to me when I was grown-up. Things happened. My great-grandfather died, my grandfather died, I moved around chasing an education, my grandparents’ house was sold, the contents scattered, and heck, I was more concerned about my family and family values and all that then in some lump of metal.

The knife, as it turned out, had gone to my mother, and my sister found it, and she says I can have it now. I guess this is my inheritance, a simple, practical knife that brings back happy memories. Here it is:

I think those are silver fittings. The handle has my great-grandfather’s initials (PV, for Peter Westad) picked out with small nails, and an engraving “WESTAD 1908” on the sheath.

Here’s the blade.

It’s still sharp, but I think you can see the edge is a bit rough — it’s going to need some tender loving care. My grandfather always told me that it was good Norwegian steel and would last a lifetime. He was wrong. It’s lasted a couple of lifetimes.

The photo is my great-grandfather and his brothers, taken in Fertile, Minnesota.

My sister is going to ship it to me later (I don’t think it would be wise to bring it on a plane), so it’ll be returning to Minnesota at long last. I’m going to have to consult some experts about maintaining it — it’s in pretty good shape after a century of neglect, so it doesn’t need a lot of work, but I would like to buff it up a bit. After all, I’m going to have to leave it to my descendants now!

Here at my mother’s house, we’re reminiscing about old times, and out come the photo albums. You have permission to mock 1990s me.

This was not a one-off. Mary’s looking good in 1995, I’m just a big dork.

In contrast, this is a photo from 1943, of my grandparents holding my mother. Formal photos look so much better. Classy!

I’m hanging out in Auburn, Washington with my mother and sisters, and yesterday I go to see my son and daughter-in-law and grandson. Mom is looking pretty good, fortunately. I might get some opportunities to get around the area and explore.

As I anticipated, it’s cool, gray, and raining. Perfect weather!

Warning: Old Man Rant coming up.

My first flight on an airplane was in 1975. I was flying from Seattle to Indianapolis to start my first year of college. It was OK. My family went right out to the gate with me, I boarded by seat number, I happened to sit next to a schoolteacher from Brownsville, IN who told me all about Indiana — the weather, the history, geography, cool differences from Washington state to watch out for. I still remember his kindness.

The flight was only remarkable in hindsight, because the airlines now have fucked up a mundane form of transportation beyond recognition.

Security theater is ridiculous. Get in a long line, take off your shoes, pull out any personal electronics, go through a scanner, get patted down by a guy in a blue uniform. Today is a light traffic day, so I was amused that there were more security personnel than passengers in the terminal.

Boarding is a nightmare of privilege. Now we board in the order First Class, Diamond Medallion, Premium Select, Comfort+, Sky Priority, Main Cabin 1, 2, and 3, and Basic Economy (on Delta; every airline has their own series of ranks). You have to pay extra to go first on the plane. I’m afraid I’m a Basic Economy person, every time.

I’m flying on Sun Country today, which is one of those no-frills airlines, so maybe I’m something even lower than Basic Economy. You will pay extra for every piece of luggage you bring on, which is fair, I guess. I’ve pared everything down to the bare essentials — everything I need for 8 days away packed into one tight little backpack. I sorta fondly remember that first flight when I packed a year’s worth of clothes into an oversized cardboard suitcase held together with packing tape. No extra cost for the flight, but this was before wheelie bags and I blistered my hands dragging that thing across the university campus.

When you buy a ticket through Sun Country, you don’t actually buy a seat — you have to go through a map of the plane where each seat has a dollar value attached, depending on their desirability. I booked a $12 seat, the lowest, because I didn’t want to spend $50 for an aisle seat near the front. I assume standing in an aisle is not an option.

And then there’s the lack of reliability — you pay for a ticket, but that’s not a promise that they’ll deliver you to your destination. They can cancel your flight at any time, there’s no recompense. There are often delays. I’ve learned that if they announce a 15 minute departure delay, that actually means they’re going to nudge that time upwards while you wait. It’s going to be hours, at least, and often ends in cancellation.

It’s all about corporate greed anymore. They’ve taken a service that used to be routine and reliable, and turned it into a hellish gamble, with the only guarantee being that the airline will get its money, whether they deliver or not.

I’d rather stay home anymore. But I’ve put my money in the slot, pulled the handle, and I’m hoping what comes up is a safe arrival in reasonable time in Seattle. So far, I’m not enjoying myself.

It’ll get better once I’m out of an airport.

It’s just getting better and better.

Last week, Musk had said that “all” X Premium Plus subscribers would get access to “Grok,” a “rebellious” ChatGPT competitor with “fewer guardrails” that Musk has said was trained on Twitter’s own data, something that Microsoft once tried, creating the world’s most racist chatbot in less than 24 hours back in 2016.

Musk outright lied, saying Grok is “being opened up slowly to Premium+ users,” a statement he likely made because a popular account posted that Grok was a feature of Premium+ subscriptions, only to be met with a community note saying that “most users with X Premium+ still lack access to Grok,” despite Musk posting two days beforehand that you should “subscribe to Premium+ for no ads and access to our Grok AI.”

I am not at all interested in yet another chatbot, especially not one trained on Xitter content, and I’m not going to ever be a Premium+ subscriber, but I was entertained by this idea:

In the event that Grok is truly trained on Twitter’s posts (after all, this is an Elon Musk product), it will become what Jathan Sadowski calls a “habsburg AI,” a “system that is so heavily trained on the outputs of other generative AI’s that it becomes an inbred mutant, likely with exaggerated, grotesque features.”

I, for one, look forward to the hideous, inbred, mutant essays that will be unleashed on the internet by this development. They can’t be worse than what mere humans can generate.